I welcome the American history wars and debates. This is the essence of my fascination with our history that has been with me since Winter Quarter of 1973 taking the course on the history of the Reconstruction Era with Dr. Belser at Auburn University, the seminal history course for me. Yoni Applebaum summarizes the debate in the current edition of The Atlantic. Here is an excerpt. The essence of her view is that we have lost our vision as Americans of our history. There has to be a reckoning. My own view is firmly on the liberal interpretation.

Yoni Applebaum in The Atlantic

Americans, of course, have never exactly agreed on why this country was founded or what it stands for. Fierce arguments over those questions have long divided families and roiled politics, and even once produced a bloody civil war. But throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, a simplistic patriotic narrative prevailed. “Providence designed that on this continent should be seen an example of democratic government,” a textbook explained to young students in 1872, “which means government ‘of the people, for the people, by the people.’ ”

Americans defined their nation in this way, by their commitment to a common creed—of equality, rights, and opportunity—and to a corresponding set of democratic ideals that they were modeling for the world. In practice, they generally fell short of those principles, sometimes seeming to pursue their abnegation more than their fulfillment. But the white men who built their fledgling republic around an idea, instead of around a common ancestry, opened the possibility that any who subscribed to its creed could become a citizen. Over time, other Americans demanded that the nation live up to its ideals and recognize their equality. For more than two centuries, our creedal nationalism has been a source of strength, binding together Americans of diverse faiths and backgrounds.

But lately, we have discovered that it is also a vulnerability. A nation defined by blood and soil—built around a shared religion or ethnicity—can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though, and bound together by a shared understanding of our history, the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal.

Yoni Appelbaum

Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor at The Atlantic